I was out sick Friday with a little bout of food poisoning. I felt like Stan from South Park: "Hey, I don’t remember eating THAT!". The worst part was when my stomach was done being sick, but my body hadn’t gotten the message (dry heaves). But, friends, I promise it was really, truly food poisoning and I am NOT copying Nancy and Sandy. Nope, no plans whatsoever to download Alan Version 2.0.

Over the weekend I made a sizeable dent in my Christmas shopping. I was very pleased with the gifts I found for Cheryl and Nancy, in particular. I dislike shopping and really dislike being in large, madding crowds (oooh, +4 points, Thomas Hardy reference!). I wouldn’t go so far as to say ‘panic attack’ when I’m in a huge, pushy crowd but it’s close. Thankfully, my experience this weekend was decent. The worst line was at Kohl’s and even that wasn’t bad; they had, oddly enough for a retailer, actually figured that the holiday season might, just maybe, result in heavy crowds so there were contingency plans in place. Every register was open (I swear it’s true!) and they had all the customers queue up in one of two roped-off lines, with an employee at the head of each line directing the next person to the next available register. It worked very smoothly and we were in line for maybe fifteen minutes, total. Other retailers should take note, because if I have to go out again to finish up, which I probably will, Kohl’s will be the first place I hit.

MONTOYA DELENDA EST!